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mail(1) [v7 man page]

MAIL(1) 						      General Commands Manual							   MAIL(1)

NAME
mail - send or receive mail among users SYNOPSIS
mail person ... mail [ -r ] [ -q ] [ -p ] [ -f file ] DESCRIPTION
Mail with no argument prints a user's mail, message-by-message, in last-in, first-out order; the optional argument -r causes first-in, first-out order. If the -p flag is given, the mail is printed with no questions asked; otherwise, for each message, mail reads a line from the standard input to direct disposition of the message. newline Go on to next message. d Delete message and go on to the next. p Print message again. - Go back to previous message. s [ file ] ... Save the message in the named files (`mbox' default). w [ file ] ... Save the message, without a header, in the named files (`mbox' default). m [ person ] ... Mail the message to the named persons (yourself is default). EOT (control-D) Put unexamined mail back in the mailbox and stop. q Same as EOT. x Exit, without changing the mailbox file. !command Escape to the Shell to do command. ? Print a command summary. An interrupt stops the printing of the current letter. The optional argument -q causes mail to exit after interrupts without changing the mailbox. When persons are named, mail takes the standard input up to an end-of-file (or a line with just `.') and adds it to each person's `mail' file. The message is preceded by the sender's name and a postmark. Lines that look like postmarks are prepended with `>'. A person is usually a user name recognized by login(1). To denote a recipient on a remote system, prefix person by the system name and exclamation mark (see uucp(1)). The -f option causes the named file, e.g. `mbox', to be printed as if it were the mail file. Each user owns his own mailbox, which is by default generally readable but not writable. The command does not delete an empty mailbox nor change its mode, so a user may make it unreadable if desired. When a user logs in he is informed of the presence of mail. FILES
/usr/spool/mail/* mailboxes /etc/passwd to identify sender and locate persons mbox saved mail /tmp/ma* temp file dead.letter unmailable text uux(1) SEE ALSO
xsend(1), write(1), uucp(1) BUGS
There is a locking mechanism intended to prevent two senders from accessing the same mailbox, but it is not perfect and races are possible. MAIL(1)

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MAIL(1) 						      General Commands Manual							   MAIL(1)

NAME
mail - send and receive electronic mail SYNOPSIS
mail [-dpqrv] [-f file] [user] OPTIONS
-d Force use of the shell variable MAILER -f Use file instead of /usr/spool/mail/user as mailbox -p Print all mail and then exit -q Quit program if SIGINT received -r Reverse print order, i.e., print oldest first -v Verbose mode EXAMPLES
mail ast # Send a message to ast mail # Read your mail DESCRIPTION
Mail is an extremely simple electronic mail program. It can be used to send or receive email on a single MINIX system, in which case it functions as user agent and local delivery agent. If the flag MAILER is defined in mail.c, it can also call a transport agent to handle remote mail as well. No such agent is supplied with MINIX. When called by user with no arguments, it examines the mailbox /usr/spool/mail/user, prints one message (depending on the -r flag), and waits for one of the following commands: <newline> Go to the next message - Print the previous message !command Fork off a shell and execute command CTRL-D Update the mailbox and quit (same as q) d Delete the current message and go to the next one q Update the mailbox and quit (same as CTRL-D) p Print the current message again s [file] Save message in the named file x Exit without updating the mailbox To send mail, the program is called with the name of the recipient as an argument. The mail is sent, along with a postmark line containing the date. For local delivery, a file named after the recipient in the directory /usr/spool/mail must be writable. If the directory /usr/spool/mail does not exist then the mail is dumped on the console, so that system programs have a way to notify a user on a system that does not have a mail spool. MAIL(1)
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